


A Good Memory

by okaynextcrisis



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 14:51:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8628583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaynextcrisis/pseuds/okaynextcrisis
Summary: In which Laura can't cook, and Bill is thankful.  Set in the Don't You Remember universe.





	

Thanksgiving had been Laura’s idea…or so he had thought.

That fateful flight, when he had boarded a plane in Los Angeles the soon-to-be head of Harvard’s History department, and walked off the tarmac in Boston the man who was going to marry Laura Roslin, had been only a few months ago.There was so much they hadn’t told each other yet, so much they still hadn’t shared.Bill wasn’t worried; he knew, in a way he had never been sure of anything before, that he and Laura had the rest of their lives to learn about each other. 

But it was already clear to him, from the few photographs in her apartment, the people who shared her red hair and green eyes, but of whom she never spoke, from the way her eyes slid away from his, when he touched on certain topics…he didn’t know what had happened to Laura’s family yet, maybe.But he knew enough to know they were gone.

It had been insensitive of him, perhaps, to mention the upcoming holiday.Maybe he should have known that it would be a sore subject.But as they’d wandered the aisles of Rainbow Grocery a few weeks before, picking up an odd-shaped vegetable here, laughing over an overpriced artisanal cheese product there, Bill had found himself, unusually, brimming with autumnal spirit, dreaming of holding hands through falling leaves, and apple picking, their cheeks red from the cold…and he’d heard himself asking his still-very-new girlfriend if she had Thanksgiving plans.

There had been clear pitfalls on the way to holiday bliss from the start, was what he was getting at.Maybe they’d been doomed from the beginning.But it had never occurred to him that the most damning obstacle before them…would be Laura’s cooking.

They could make the meal themselves, she’d said.His kitchen was pretty small, but hers was decent, and they could do it all together.Nothing fancy; just a small turkey, and some mashed potatoes, and maybe a nice, easy pumpkin pie…

Bill Adama would never call himself a chef.But he could boil water, and turn on an oven, and in Laura’s kitchen, this might as well have made him Gordon Ramsey.In retrospect, it made a certain amount of sense that the care and attention to more pressing matters that had made Laura a sought-after constitutional lawyer might not have left her much time for the niceties of cuisine, but _my gods_ , was the woman even safe to use a microwave?

“Bill, can pumpkin pie filling curdle?”

Laura’s hair was haphazardly pulled off her neck; mashed potatoes clung to bright red stands.Bill looked warily up at the ceiling.Just as he’d feared, globs of half-burned potato were dripping down to the floor.He thought about asking Laura how the potatoes had ended up on the ceiling when all he’d asked her to do was fetch the milk, and then thought better of it.

“Better toss it,” he advised.When Laura thought back on this evening, and reflected on the parts that were—perhaps inadvertently, but still causally—his fault, he did not want her memory to also include food poisoning. 

Laura sighed, more in resignation than in sorrow.“Well, there goes dessert, then, along with both side dishes,” she said.(Bill had not been aware that they’d lost the green beans, but thought it better not to press.)“Is there any word from the turkey?”

Given the amount of smoke thickening Laura’s kitchen, it was impossible to determine how much of it was currently coming from the oven…but Bill’s hopes were not high. 

“Let’s see,” he said, sliding on the purple furry oven mitts Laura had bought last week and affecting a cheer that he hoped might inspire the troops…or, should he say, _troop_. 

He tugged open the oven door…and immediately began to cough.

That the turkey was lost was a foregone conclusion.That Laura was going to lose her security deposit was as well.Bill’s first cogent thought was that at least they’d caught it now, before the building had to be evacuated. 

“Well?” Laura asked apprehensively, from several paces back…and with good reason, he couldn’t help but think.

He turned, slowly, raising his purple furry oven mitts in defeat.“I think it might be time to start thinking in terms of…plan B,” he said carefully.

* * *

“I’ve never tried to do Thanksgiving myself before,” Laura lamented, her pillow over her face.  (They’d decamped to her bedroom, where the smoke was not quite so thick.) 

She lifted her head, her red hair mussed in a way that was so clearly adorable Bill couldn’t help but think the whole experience had been worth it.“I haven’t even _eaten_ Thanksgiving since…”

She trailed off, her eyes leaving his. 

If he asked, he knew, she would tell him.Maybe he should have.But there were still potatoes in her hair, and pumpkin on her knuckles, and smoke in her apartment, and maybe they’d had enough character-building experiences for one day.Maybe Laura could stand a good memory now, instead.

“We’re eating Thanksgiving,” Bill said, getting up (regretfully) from her bed.He held up a finger.“Give me one minute,” he declared, before heading back into the kitchen.

He returned, as promised, with the single food neither ruined by their cooking nor contaminated by the resulting fumes.

“Potato chips,” he said cheerfully, dumping a single bag on the bed between them.“Happy Thanksgiving, Laura.”

She snorted, then clapped a hand over her mouth, unable to smother her giggles.“Happy Thanksgiving, Bill,” she managed, popping open the bag. 

He raised a chip and mock-clinked it against hers, and she laughed harder. 

It wasn’t the holiday he’d envisioned when he’d first hefted the turkey into their shopping cart.Nor, he knew, had Laura’s plans prominently featured potato chip crumbs in her clean sheets.But with Laura, Bill couldn’t help but think long-term, and this…this was going to make a great story.He could picture them, a year from now, laughing about tonight (and tomorrow, when they had to clean up the whole mess), their first Thanksgiving together, but not their last.He was almost envious of their future selves, how happy they would be, to have this story to tell…

…as long as they told it over takeout.


End file.
